Squat Low, Jump High
I reached age 20 having never grabbed a basketball rim, despite being devoted to basketball since age 5.
I also reached age 20 having never been coached to train my legs through a full range of motion.
This makes sense, right? Why would you train your legs through a full range of motion if basketball jumping isn’t through a full range of motion?
Well, now I’m 30 and my maximum vertical jump has basically doubled. I get to live like the natural freak athlete now. I play basketball with my friends on Sundays and I can dunk every which way. A 10-foot rim now looks like it’s 9 feet high to me.
And from 20 to 30, it’s very likely that I did more training of my legs through a full range of motion than any other basketball player in that time frame.
Here’s why:
Your vastus medialis muscle isn’t maximally prioritized if you don’t train it through a full range of motion.
Your vastus medialis muscle proportion reduces knee pain and your vastus medialis is the most fast-twitch of your thigh muscles. “Fast-twitch” means it’s responsible for quick bursts of energy, like sprinting and jumping.
Also, your knee tendons don’t maximally develop unless you train them through a full range of motion. Pound-for-pound, your tendons are stronger than your muscles, giving you more of that “springy” factor which the natural greats have.
So if you don’t train through full range of motion, you aren’t likely to know your jumping potential.
Think I’m an outlier?
Far from it…
Let’s consider my case to be likely the greatest change from terrible natural jumping.
Now let’s look at the greatest outlier in the sport of high jump.
Stefan Holm is 5 foot 11. He does NOT have those high-cut, cheetah-like calf muscles. He has a relatively normal build.
Yet he was able to compete at an elite level longer than anyone in high jump history.
Relative to his height, he was the greatest high jumper of all time (meaning: the differential between the height of his head, and the height of the bar he could jump over) and he even won a gold medal.
He was also the deepest documented squatter in high jump history:
Remind you of someone?
My form looks almost identical to Stefan Holm’s. Stefan is wearing Olympic weightlifting shoes with a raised heel. You can use a weight plate on the floor to elevate your heels. I made “ATG Buddies” based on the concept of portable rubber doorstops. They fold up together inside a carrying case and will be for sale cheap on Amazon this summer.
It appears that Stefan used full range of motion squats from a young age, and never had major knee injuries.
In my case, I had major knee injuries. I could not just drop down into a full range of motion squat without excruciating pain.
For me, it took a balance of squat regressions, and of rebalancing my horrendously imbalanced legs with a full range of motion split squat.
As a wonderful byproduct, this gave my hips tremendous mobility and strength and solved any chronic hip issues I had as well.
My ATG Program is the first program to train these two motions (full range of motion squat and full range of motion split squat) in exact balance to each other. I’m grateful for that every day because it allows me to live as if I’m a genetic freak for jumping and for knee health, despite once thinking my genetics would be incapable of either.
You can click here to see my up to date squat system.
And you can click here to see my up to date split squat system.
I will be training both this week in the ATG program.
You’ll also notice that when I do the barbell squat as Stefan Holm did, I add chains to the bar. This way I’m challenging myself through the entire exercise, top to bottom. As I rise up, the chains lift off the ground and the weight smoothly increases. We are weaker at the bottom of a squat and I can see how someone like an NFL player might not want to reduce their weights in order to go deeper. With chains, you don’t have to. Just yesterday I had an NFL player visit who had never trained a full range of motion squat. He’s already had a full ACL tear and plays through intense chronic pain. His only options are more surgeries, injections and painkillers. Enter the ATG Leg Day: Within 1 session he was squatting with full range of motion with bar and chains, and to his amazement his knee pain vanished.
But I understand the body. The goal of the ATG program is not short-term. Even though short-term wins occur every day, the goal is applying a system to increase the chances of finding your true potential while reducing the chances of pain and injury. These human bodies are frail things and they all expire. There are no guarantees. But it is a gift to be able to improve someone’s chances of success while reducing their pain.
In the sport of dunking, the highest-claimed vertical jump ever (56 inches) and the greatest dunk longevity case is Kadour Ziani. He’s still dunking at 48 years old despite being less than 6 feet tall, and he has done unquestionably the most documented full range of motion leg training of anyone in dunk history.
Even the greatest known jump longevity case of all humans, George Hackenschmidt — who could jump over a table at age 75 — used perhaps the most aggressive full range of motion leg workout ever:
What’s fascinating is how the exercise community completely altered his “Hack Squat.”
Below you can see what’s taught in college textbooks as the “Hack Squat” without showing what George actually did:
As you can see, the range of motion is stopped halfway down. My guess is that people could not hold very much weight when using a full range of motion, so rather than put in the work that George did, they tried to jump right to his weights, which meant no longer using a full range of motion.
Life and sports are already a lot of stress on our bodies, and when we limit full range of motion, we create bodies designed proportionately weaker as we approach the joints.
I’ll keep doing my part, which I’ve identified as focusing on solutions.
As far as I know, I haven’t invented any exercises, but I have innovated many progressions and regressions which help people win with exercise.
Okay, it’s Sunday, my once-a-week basketball day with my ATG Staff.
I squatted low this week.
Now I get to go jump high!
Yours in Solutions,
Ben
Update: I was flying high and effortlessly, and even my 43-year-old training partner Derek Williams (@mr1nf1n1ty) did 10+ dunks with me after playing! What an incredible feeling.
